Galveston: A History of the Island

Was done well to tell story of town.

I love to refer this book when asked about our lovely island! I lent my original copy out and never got it back. Happy I have one on my book shelf again!

I’ve admired Gary Cartwright’s writing for years. In the author’s note to Galveston: A History of the Island, Cartwright tells us he is a reporter, not a historian. That is a good thing because this is not a dry piece of history, but rather the book is chockful of great stories. He covers Galveston from the Karankawa Indian days to the pirate era, the Spanish explorer time, the pre- and post-Civil War years, and on to the present (or at least the present at the time the book was written, in 1991.) Having lived in Houston and visited Galveston over the years, I can report not a whole lot as happened in Galveston since 1991. There has been no big boom in development or population to my knowledge. Galveston, once the premier city in Texas, has continued on its way—as it has for the entire twentieth century and into the twenty-first—as a pleasant place to visit and, I suppose, a good place to live. The rich families that controlled it for the last hundred years are perhaps in decline, but another descendant of Galveston’s mobsters (not that he is a mobster himself) has sort of taken over and added touristy developments. Cartwright ends his book with the rise of that developer, Tilman Fertitta, great nephew of one of the gamblers who held tight control over Galveston in the 1950s. As I said, this book is chockful of stories which I found entertaining. But Cartwright’s book tends to sway towards the stories of those powerful civic leaders and tells us less, at times, about the ordinary people and ordinary lives of Galveston. I wanted a book that described what life was like in the city during its various decades. Instead, mostly what I got were tales of dirty dealings among its powerful leaders. That’s well and good and something, I suppose, a reporter would gravitate to. But I wish Cartwright had been a little bit more historian as well.

Living so close to Galveston, I wanted the history. This book has the most accurate facts and details beginning with head hunters and the perceived size of the island to almost the present day. Beautifully written with actual pictures and names, places, and buildings I can relate to, I recommend this to many people and have given five copies as gifts. MR

A well written history of Galveston from the first visit by Europeans to the modern day. Good insight into the families that played an instrumental role in the growth and development of the island and a really well presented view of the hurricane of 1900 and it's impact on the lives of those that met this great storm and the changes it brought to the island. How Galveston has adapted to the changes brought about from the Houston Ship Channel and the resulting loss of it's reason for success up to that time is well told and reflects the spirit and willingness to change on the part of the people that call Galveston home.